Dear University Community:
We are pleased to bring you the Annual Report of the Women’s Caucus. The caucus was inaugurated in Spring 2011 and advocates for positive change on issues of concern to women faculty and staff at UD. In honor of Women’s History Month, we are excited to share the Annual Report in a web series format over the month of March.
Review of the Past Year
In the midst of the 2020 Annual Report web series, we all headed home for “two weeks” due to COVID-19. It’s been a whole year, and many of us have not set foot in our UD offices since. However, the work of the Women’s Caucus continued.
In early June of 2020, we welcomed new members to our Executive Board. Then in July, we awarded our Torch Award to Sowmya Shankar. As an Executive Board, we met over the summer and had a discussion about the racial injustices, and we work to be more antiracist and conscientious of the intersectional identities of our BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color), women colleagues. We hosted our Fall General meeting in October on Zoom and had powerful conversations about the impact COVID, racial inequalities, and the impact the budget is having on faculty and staff across the institution. Since then, we developed a survey to understand various care needs experienced by UD employees (see below), worked with Institutional Research and Effectiveness on the data about women at UD, and prepared this Annual Report.
Structure of Web Series for our Annual Report
Again this year, the annual report will be broken into three issues spread out over the month of March. Be on the lookout for data regarding the representation of women at UD across faculty and staff, a breakdown of women of color across faculty and staff, and a breakdown of salary ratios. We will also provide suggestions for other ways to engage with this data through documentaries, podcasts, and related articles.
Lastly, we would like to celebrate you and all your accomplishments and resiliency over the past year – here is a link to send in ‘Shoutout’ to your colleagues or your own successes this year. Within the last issue of the month, we want to share all the incredible work women are doing!
Survey
In reflection of how hard 2020 was for many of us, the Women’s Caucus is interested in documenting COVID-19’s affected work-life experiences, including caregiving experiences, among faculty and staff across the University through administering a survey.
This survey takes about 10 minutes to complete. The survey results will be used to understand how COVID-19 has affected work-life experiences, caregiving responsibilities and coping strategies, and the resources that faculty and staff may need. Data may be used to inform future programs and policies across the University. We seek responses from all gender identities – not just those who identify as women – to capture everyone’s work/life experiences during this time. Please feel free to forward this link to your colleagues and other networks across the University. All faculty and staff can participate in the survey by clicking HERE.
If you are interested in learning more about the Women’s Caucus or want to get involved in any way, please contact us at womenscaucus@udel.edu or visit us online at https://sites.udel.edu/women.
We hope that you join us at future meetings!
Sincerely,
Meaghan Davidson & Megan Wenner